Sure. You can have it be that way. But there is absolutely no reason a mortal race could not have hard coded biological evil nature. Certain behaviors that are just instinctual that fit on the evil spectrum. There is absolutely no reason that every mortal race will experience the same entire moral spectrum as humans or have the same middle set point by nature, even if raised by those who are 'good'.
They are not humans in rubber forehead and ear prosthetics.
Aren't they? Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Drow and many more are classified as "humanoids" which implies numerous similarities. I firmly believe nurture holds more sway then nature in cases of sentient, free thinking creatures.
In there world the difference between an Orc and Human is no wider then the difference between a Caucasian and a Asian in our world. Riddle me this; If I took the phrase "All Orcs are evil because they are Orcs" and replaced Orcs so it now said "All Arabs are evil because they are Arabs", does that seem right to you?
A few... "closed-minded" people and groups might agree with that statement, but most of us will say "Of course not! That's stupid, bias and racist." But replace Arabs with Orcs again and everyone will say; "Well they are Orcs now, so it's different..."
But is it different? I don't think so.
The biggest issue with that line of reasoning is that Arabs, Asians, Caucasians are all real but Orcs are not.
As far as the real world goes, though, there are certainly biological drivers for conditions like psychopathy (diminished empathy, antisocial behavior, etc.).
There's no reason that a fantasy race couldn't have every member of the population possess a very strident and strong form of psychopathy combined with very high levels of hormones and an overactive adrenal gland and you have a very real biological basis for "evil" fantasy races.
Orcs, though, are a special case because they can interbreed with humans so it would be reasonable to argue that they're as similar to a fantasy human as an Asian and a Caucasian. What about goblins? Ogres? Sasquatch? Catfolk? They're obviously and clearly not as similar to humans as various human ethnicities are to each other.
I'm not sure people are getting that someone can commit an evil act and still remain "good" aligned. They can't make a habit of it, and certainly any "good" character who decides that murdering a child of any sentient race is acceptable is quickly going to find themselves in the Neutral row, but someone who has done nothing but defend and aid their people is going to qualify as Good, regardless of what they may do in the future.
I think we're going to have to disagree on that point. There are certain levels of evil acts that will put you squarely in the evil category in the games I run. Murdering children is one of those acts. Someone pay spend decades defending and aiding their people but that can easily get over-ridden by going all Anakin Skywalker and murdering a village.
On talk of killing innocents, which includes children and the elderly we have to remember life isn't fair, and can be very cruel sometimes. Knowingly murdering an innocent is an evil act by mortal standards, I won't even try to argue that point as that's what I believe personally.
But in war good people die, it can be largely avoided but never entirely. Let's imagine this; You are a soldier part of a small unit fighting in a war torn enemy city, the enemy is mostly routed from the city and your unit is chasing down one or more fleeing enemy soldiers.
Said soldiers end up holding up in abandoned house, instead of risking going in and into an ambush you're unit decides to fire bomb the house instead of taking the risk going in, the house burns to the ground, collapses into the heap, killing the soldiers inside. The battle eventually winds down, your side is victorious and then sometime later while digging through the wreckage of said house from earlier you are shocked to find not only the charred bodies of the hold up soldiers but a whole family who was also taking shelter in that house.
Your briefing said the city was evacuated of all civilians, and that only combatants where left inside it's walls, but either your Intel was wrong or for whatever reason that family couldn't or wouldn't leave. So congratulations! You just murdered innocent civilians, are you evil now? The answer for most people is; no.
Had your unit suspected/known that innocents where inside you most certainly would have acted differently, either risked a breach of the house or ordered the combatants to surrender with hopes they, and the civilians, would comes out without having to die. The ultimate truth is in war people die, and there is no rewind button, there is no do overs or loading checkpoints, despite what you could have done what you did do is what happened. Soldiers IRL are wracked for life by events just like this, PTSD encompasses a wide range of situations, not just bread and butter "shell shock".
Also this whole talk of "do you kill goblin children" reminds me of the endless theoretical debates on the internet of "would you kill baby Hitler", to which I answer to both in one response with; "No."
No I would not kill baby Hitler if I somehow could, simple put when he was a baby he was innocent, he had not yet become the evil megalomaniac Jew slaughtering monster we know and loathe today, he may have became a monster, but he wasn't born as one.
Let's change history for example; Let's say that after the end of WWI France got talked down by the allies so they never imposed the heavy war reparations on Germany, opting for a more modest long term reimbursement in it's place. Germany never fell into it's massive post WWI depression, life was little tough, but not nearly as bad. Hilter coming home from the war as a low ranking message carrier, seeing Germany was all and all not doing to bad gave up his soldiering and political ambitions, instead decided to embrace and refine his passion from art, (say what you want about his morals IRL but he was a pretty good painter) becoming a well renowned artist.
Now instead of being remembered as one of the most hated human beings of all time he is remembered as talented painter who fought in the first world war as a simple soldier. Without the post war depression to fuel his hatred and make him establish his Nazi party, he never became the abhorrent monster we read about today. Granted changing anything about history would cause an unknowable amount of changes that no mortal mind or super computer could comprehension but I digress, my point is made. Hitler for all his evil was a victim of circumstance, all mortals are, I consider Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Orges, Drow and Naga no different.
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I'm just happy to be among like minded people who agree while Tolkien set the foundation for the modern fantasy genre that some of the dated tropes need to be left behind.Bearded female Dwarves, and always evil mook races among them.
What's wrong with bearded female Dwarves?
(By the way, bearded female humans can be found on very rare occasion -- I one works at the same institution where I work, although in a different department. It's presumably a mutation -- who says that such a mutation couldn't be common in the Dwarven population?)
Also, different Humanoid races (technically, they should really be called species and sub-species, depending on interbreedability) are definitely more different than different Human races on Earth -- the different different aging rates and different abilities should be proof enough.
My problem with Tolkien's Dwarves has nothing to do with the facial hair of their women. It's more to the fact that they for all intents and purposes, don't exist. They play no part in his story, they're not even mentioned in the Silmarillion!
And really, the modern fantasy genre is so so so much more than Tolkien... this was true even when Tolkien's books were starting to get popular. (it's easy to forget that for decades, Tolkien's books gathered dust before they became the supposed fantasy reference model.) If you were to read Gygax's Bibliography in the AD+D books, the list of influences is so great, that Tolkien nearly gets lost in the shuffle. I suspect that many gamers are so uneducated in the breadth of the fantasy genre in the 1970's, that much of what they attribute to Tolkien's influence in the game came from many other sources.
My problem with Tolkien's Dwarves has nothing to do with the facial hair of their women. It's more to the fact that they for all intents and purposes, don't exist. They play no part in his story, they're not even mentioned in the Silmarillion!
Didn't they make the Nauglamir for Finrod Felagund?
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